I love Chablis so unreservedly that impartiality approaches impossibility. This love pushes far beyond the limiting view of Chablis as crisp apéritif or partner with “light” dishes. To me, that notion suggests that Chablis is the least understood of the world's great wines. 

On a global scale, few regions earn superlatives. Chablis counts at least two. First, it’s the world’s most fiercely individual and least replicable white wine. A number of top Chardonnays from the Sonoma Coast, Oregon, Jura, and New Zealand might stunt-double as a good Chassagne village. Chablis has no persuasive imitators. (Those undistinguished unoaked “Chablis-style” Chardonnays that clog retail shelves everywhere? Please.)  

Second, Chablis is the region in which historical and contemporary wine styles diverge most strongly.

For nearly a thousand years before the introduction of stainless steel in the 1960s, oak was the medium for fermenting and aging Chablis. Early modern wine writers uniformly stressed the central role of oak in developing the fundamental components of Chablisien personality. André Jullien, who was likely France’s most influential early 19th century wine writer, argued the importance of aging Chablis two full years in wood and another in bottle before drinking. In the middle of the same century, the equally estimable Dr. Jules Guyot points to body and limpidity—its softness and generosity—as quintessential Chablisien markers. Chablis was uniformly believed to achieve these defining features, of body and suppleness, through extended aging in barrel.

The modern notion of Chablis as a crisp, lemon-scented white traces to the region’s contemporary preference for steel over wood. Steel has long been worth its weight in gold, so to speak, to enterprising winemakers. To cite only a few benefits of replacing staves with steel: predictable fermentations, clean wines, and fast-to-market product. It's worth recalling, too, that Parisian bistros, just a hundred miles or so downstream from Chablis, have long been a thirsty audience for the region's latest vintage. 

Domaines such as François Raveneau, Vincent Dauvissat, and Laurent Tribut, which continue to produce wines in accord with historical precedent, mark a departure from current regional norms. When I was a sommelier, I learned to contextualize these oak-aged Chablis after, on more than a few occasions, bottles were returned for being “unusual” or even “off.” Body and texture, the region’s historical touchstones, are today widely regarded as atypical. 

If time and wood add suppleness and body to Chablis they make an even more critical contribution to terroir expression. Chardonnay in Chablis needs air—lots of air—in order to persuasively express nuances of specific vineyards. Here's a piece of easy-to-remember advice on serving Chablis: decant them. Decant the heck out of them. Even better: challenge yourself to over-decant them. Other wines evolve; Chablis changes. Most wines evolve along a trajectory you can guess upon opening. Chablis gives us a caterpillar-butterfly transformation and drops us at a final destination so umami—think white miso and nori— we're never quite certain how we arrived there. Steel preserves freshness and bite but does not result in a fully actualized Les Preuses or Montée de Tonnerre. 

During a visit to her domaine in early 2020, Isabelle Raveneau described to me the impact of oak aging on site specificity. Her grandfather, François Raveneau, held that Chablis should be bottled only after barrels had developed wines into expressively complete versions of themselves. Putting what he called “pimpled teenagers”—raw, steely Chablis—into bottle resulted, then as now, in awkward and only partially developed wines. He maintained that oak and time were not merely a formula, but the formula for fully activating the specifics of site. 

It’s practically outright heresy, I know, to assert that élevage, rather than terroir, is the most critical factor in the production of classic Chablis. But if supple, intense, and flavory Chablis is what you want, you’re likelier to find it in a second- or third-class vineyard whose wine is aged for 18 months in wood than a grand cru raised for a year in steel. 

It is worth recalling that Chablis vineyards were originally classified purely on the basis of heat and sun exposure, rather than the centuries of monastic trial-and-error vineyard research relied upon in the Côte d’Or. At Chablis’ northerly limit of Chardonnay’s ability to fully ripen, first Romans and then monks prioritized the warmest sites and largely declined to discriminate further. Places where snow first melted in the spring suggested fortuitous vineyards and were planted accordingly. Les Clos has for nearly a thousand years enjoyed the reputation as the finest vineyard in the region, a reputation based far more on consistent ripening than critical examination of the wines. Our warming age has reduced the region’s appellation hierarchy to little more than tenuous speculation. Historically, this hierarchy directed us toward then-elusive ripeness. Today we can count on such ripeness, and can thus direct our attention elsewhere to find the greatest Chablis.

The five producers below carry on the tradition of classic—in the historic sense—Chablis. In the interest of recommending wines that are relatively easy to find and priced well below the region's most expensive, I've intentionally omitted both Dauvissat and Raveneau—even though, of course, those domaines produce some of the greatest white wines anywhere. And since only a small minority of cuvées produced at the following five domaines retails above $100, side-by-side tastings will be fascinating—and refreshingly realistic. 

Five Chablis Producers to Know

Julien Brocard

Brocard’s perfectionist winemaking results in wines that are consistently among Chablis’ most texturally appealing, with many achieving the sphericality and satin-like texture that made Raveneau’s wines famous and wildly coveted. Though not from a classed vineyard, the Chablis La Boissonneuse ($40) consistently numbers with the region’s strongest values. The Petit Chablis ($35) too vies for best-of-category in a lighter-framed yet impressively mineral style. Among the higher-level cuvées the intensely spicy grand cru Les Preuses merits singling out, for being a true tête de cuvée without the precipitous pricing of grands crus found further south.

Bernard Defaix

This domaine wins my vote for the region’s pound-for-pound best. Defaix owns a large holding in the premier cru Côte de Léchet ($35), and makes the most of the opportunity with a wonderfully subtle and intriguingly lime-scented example. Better still is the more limited Côte de Léchet Vieilles Vignes Reserve ($45), from a small parcel of old vines given extended aging in barrel. It’s a wine more about salt and stones than overt fruit. The grand cru Bougros ($95) achieves greater richness and impact but trades off a bit of the marvelous subtlety of the old-vine Côte de Léchet.

Laurent Tribut

Along with Dauvissat and Raveneau, Tribut is the third of the region’s arch-traditionalists. Prices remain, however, well below those peers. The wines here are texturally closer to Dauvissat (more starched, more solid, less spherical) than Raveneau. In many vintages, they could stunt-double for Dauvissat’s, at one-third the price. My favorite of the wines is the premier cru Beauroy ($75). The first impression is one of dramatic scale, though its textural intricacy and persistence on the palate are equally remarkable. 

Samuel Billaud

Samuel Billaud spent many years at his family’s Domaine Billaud-Simon before launching his own winery for the 2009 vintage. This is one address for which the top of the range is considerably more interesting than the remainder. Montée de Tonnerre ($70) is the choice of the premiers crus, drawing on fruit from old vines in both Montée de Tonnerre itself as well as neighboring Chapelot, and blended just before bottling. The wine is splendidly rich and concentrated and softens beautifully with cellaring (or decanting). This domaine is also home to one of the very best examples of Les Clos ($175), the region’s senior grand cru.  It displays a luxurious, drawn butter-like richness alongside the impressive depth of sweet citrus fruit. 

Pascal Robin

This up-and-comer has less than a decade at its back yet has already produced impressive results. The style here is more discrete and delicate, less explicit—and even in warm vintages, never fruit-centered. Nori and white miso-like touches give a distinct umamied aspect to the range. I love the Chablis Vallée Sébillon ($40), an expressive articulation of this house style. Texturally, the wine begins rather linear before time in the glass adds aromatic width and succulence. The premier cru Vaillons ($65) is every inch a pleasure. This is Chablis at its most essential and vital. The 2020 I recently tasted smells as much like flowers as, well, flowers do.